SetLocation on a JLabel only sets it for a few milliseconds

Question

My main class extends JFrame, and I have two panels gameArea and commandArea. I set the Layout of the content pane to BorderLayout and placed JPanel gameArea in the Center and JPanel commandArea in the South. I didn't specify a layout for gameArea, although I believe it uses FlowLayout by default. I added my JLabel test to gameArea. I have a timer whose event fires every 10 milliseconds.
I'm writing a typing tutor program for a class. The program is supposed to scroll a word down the screen, and if you type it before it hits the bottom you get a point. When you type a letter it uses HTML in the JLabel to increase the font size of the letters you've already typed.
What I initially did was use Graphics.drawString to draw the word to the gameArea JPanel, but that produced a lot of flickering. What I'm doing now is using setLocation to move my JLabel (which contains the word) down the screen. The Timer event calls setLocation. I use the keyTyped event to grab the keystrokes.
This looks much smoother, except the word still flickers at the top center of my window while it's moving down the page. If I don't type anything it looks fine, but once I start typing it starts flickering. If I click the Pause button, which stops the Timer, the JLabel moves up to the top center of my window and sits there.
I've tried gameArea.setLayout(null) but then the JLabel doesn't appear on the screen at all. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

You must set gameArea's layout to null, and set the size of your label because without layout the size will not be computed and you won't see the label...
Hope this helped,
Regards.